Dirty words in advertising.

There are three words I really try to avoid in the day job of advertising and media.

At their best, these words are convenient shorthands that shave milliseconds off status calls and email exchanges.

At their worst, which is most of the time, they are lazy misuses of diction that lead to dangerous misunderstandings doing quiet harm across teams and time.

They are euphemisms obfuscating concepts too dirty to state more precisely aloud.

Kind of like how the Air Force calls bombs, "ordnance."

Or how companies call mass layoffs, "impact."

These words are used to alleviate the speaker's discomfort when the receiver often would just prefer clarity and directness.

Ultimately, dirty words cost money.

Left uncorrected, they distort cultures, business models, and ultimately, effective work. Their innocuousness is their insidiousness and here are mine:

1. "Partners"

Are we really partners if you can fire me whenever you want?

In a quest to sound more relevant, indispensable, and "upstream," platforms, agencies, freelancers, publishers, and vendors have all fallen in love with this strange word.

Sure, I suppose we're "partners" in the sense that we both get something out of a transaction, but the reality is one has money and the other has expertise, media inventory, or product—there's no implied loyalty to it.

Just like a surgeon or plumber is not a patient's or a flooded homeowner's partner, respectively.

Neither one of us is turning down a better (or cheaper) opportunity in the other's best interest.

For a partner like Meta, the answer to any marketing problem is to buy more Meta.

And I've yet to see a creative agency partner turn down a client's request to do a lucrative (naming, innovation, AI) project, it has no actual idea, experience or expertise in doing. Like an honest partner would.

The currency of advertising and media relationships is currency, not love.

Worst of all, the word is often used as a veiled negotiating tactic for asking for aggressive discounts (or, investing in our partnership).

We may be repeat business transactors, we may even be equals, but we're not partners.

2. "Social"

In 2023, this word literally means nothing.

YouTube, Instagram, X have more fundamental differences in human behaviors and expectations than they have in common.

They should almost never be treated as the same.

Yet, somehow they are all "social."

I suppose in the same way that a Tesla and a vacuum are both "electric devices."

Or how an apple and the flu are both "organic."

Most often, this lazy grouping leads to reformatting a :30 TV spot a dozen times instead of creating an ad truly native to the platform and victoriously labeling them "social assets."

It's a dirty, useless word.

3. "Strategy"

Unfortunately, this word hits closest to my heart.

"Strategy" is a dirty word because it disguises the practical discipline of navigating decisions and resources into a mystical art of generating academic, navel-gazing fugazi.

Next time you're in a "strategic" discussion, just substitute the word with "evidenced" or "reasonable," and you'll find that it makes little difference.

Strategy simply sounds more exclusive, expensive, enduring—when at its best, it's an educated gamble for achieving desired outcomes that should be both constantly applied and interrogated.

Strategy should not be grand tasks reserved for a few, but shared team responsibility like good grammar or punctuality.

There were people doing "strategy" long before "strategist" became a title.

Don't say "strategy," just do smart things.

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